Jessie presenting her work at the KINBRE meeting in 2024
Jessie started at KU in March of 2020 after an incredibly successful graduate degree at Vanderbilt with Seth Bordenstein. She continued to do great things at KU including…
getting her own funding: an NSF PRFB and an NIH K99!
publishing: papers in PLOS Genetics, MBE, BMC Biology and more!
outreach and community building: Jessie founded the Kansas Postdoc Outreach Program (KPOP) and was a leader in KU Center for Genomics efforts including the annual Symposium.
mentoring: Jessie was an exceptional mentor to others in the lab serving as almost a second advisor and a good sounding board for me
the lab social organizer: she organized outings (Ren Fest), book clubs, the often disappointing lab trivia team, and more.
Jessie will be missed dearly, but we are looking forward to seeing what she does in her own lab. She is joining the Department of Biology at the University of Virginia and will work on various aspects of symbiosis, Wolbachia and immune defense. Good luck Jessie!
